Friday, November 11, 2011

As the Raiders beat the Chargers to move to 5 and 4 the Chiefs wait in the wings to pick up the pieces and get a grip on the AFC West. Will it happen?

Who knows?

What is certain is that nothing is certain. That's for sure.

Why? Because the old any give Sunday has never been so true as it is today. Just look at the San Diego – Raiders game. Experts called it a San Diego opportunity, but the Raiders had different ideas. Still, the game was close and Carson Palmer performed well after the mauling the Chiefs dished out to him.

Except for a few big plays the game was a toss-up.

The Chiefs host a much improved Denver team this week and desperately need a win to keep up with Oakland. Have they any reason for optimism? Not really.

Last time out they were embarrassed by a Miami team without a win (any given Sunday).

Their home form has been erratic to say the least.

If you were a bookmaker you'd bet on Denver, and this is not just getting down on the home boys, but a measure of how poorly the Chiefs are look at the half-way stage.

The offence cannot really generate a running game and therefore Matt Cassell cannot generate a passing game. QED, the Chiefs are going to struggle unless they can untrack some kind of rushing game. Can they do it? Looks problematical.

Tebow dishes out something different and the Chiefs look vulnerable to a running game.

The defence will have to have a big game, with interceptions as well as hurries and fumble recoveries.

Prediction time: hate to say it but Denver may well win.

Re-group time for the Reds – it might be next year before we really have a team.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased – Hans Frank

Let us leave it to a convicted Nazi war criminal to provide the twisted rationale for a French surrender and the collective European amnesia which allows the Germans to play hard ball with the EU.

So what do we get?

That fat Hausfrau Merkel dictating to Europe what the Germans will allow them to do.

That Eau d'Dwarf Sarkozy, product of a Greek Jew and a Hungarian aristo ( I know, you can hardly believe it) is still so frightened of the big bad Germans that he hides under a Carla's skirt whenever he sees one approaching the long-extinct Maginot Line.

That arch-coward George Papandreou, instead of reminding Merkel of the debt Germany owes to Greece, cobbles together an unlikely looking coalition of losers to placate the Krauts.

I can not believe it!

Meanwhile President Obama sits on the side-lines and waits to see how the Europeans can screw up the world's economy because he does not have the stomach for a fight with Germany. The war-time coalition must be spinning so fast in their graves that if only we could harness the force involved we could solve the energy crisis for another generation.

Let us forget the economics of the situation. Like all economic arguments no-one, least of all the politicians, really understands what's going on.

I'd rather focus on the Germans.

How did they, seemingly all of a sudden (in economic terms), become the all powerful super-Krauts who must be obeyed?

Don't forget barely a generation ago they were destitute, relying on the rest of us, mostly us as in U.S., to make sure they didn't starve. So we did.

Billions were spend trying to get rid of the Nazi crowd. Whole European countries were bankrupted – including Greece. Millions of Europeans perished.

Then we gave the Krauts a lot of money to prevent them from turning Soviet.

My plan. The Germans should underwrite the Greek debt. All of it. And, for all time.

Then every year British, Irish, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Belgian and Danish citizens should form an orderly queue outside their chosen German auto factory to collect their new BMW, Audi, Mercedes or Porsche.

Vincent Tabac has been justly convicted. We can be fairly sure of that as he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The jury decided it was murder. I've no problem with that.

I do have a problem with some aspects of the media reporting of the case; because, other than some fairly dodgy reporting, there is not much else of interest or renown.

Vincent Tabac killed his neighbour in a fit of rage/depression/desperation/perverse excitement or something else. Only he really knows. He then tried to dispose of the body. He failed miserably.

The media make great play of the fact that he went shopping with Jo's body in the back of his car – as if this some great indicator of his evil nature. This is nonsensical. If, and he never claimed otherwise, Tabac was not suffering from some mental disturbance at the time, going shopping is simply an indicator of the stress he was under at the time – not some Machiavellian machination.

His half-hearted attempt to dispose of the body again shows that he was not thinking clearly. The media have portrayed him as some kind of techno-weirdo, highly educated and somewhat of a misfit. Much has been made of his “odd” personality.

Actually, he seems no more odd than any number of people you and I know.

Finally the media have sought to sensationalise his interest in internet porn, and violent internet porn at that. It also appears he paid for sex and visited some fairly decadent quarters to find it.

It would be great if this were so abnormal as to be outrageous. Unfortunately, it is not. The internet is awash with sites that you and I would find very disturbing. One thing you can be sure of – if no-one looked at them then they wouldn't be there. Not only Vincent Tabac looks at disturbing web sites.

Vincent Tabac is not a very nice person, despite the fact that neighbours found him fine and his girlfriend had no suspicions about him. So, but for the grace . . .

He will pay dearly for his crime, and so he should. But, to portray him as something so out of the ordinary that it is beyond comprehension is wrong.

Sadly that part of the human condition which “allows” us to mistreat, murder, maim or pervert our fellow humans is just not understood, either by the public, the police, the courts or the sociologists.

I suspect it never will be. Tabac will have a long time in prison to think about it, and so he should.